45 - Calvinism in the Early Modern Netherlands and the Dutch Atlantic World

Summary

Writing on the religious culture of the early modern Dutch Republic, the eminent historian Johan Huizinga once observed, “The foreigner who wishes to understand our history begins with the assumption that the Republic was indisputably a Calvinist state and a Calvinist land.” To this Huizinga, a Groninger with Mennonite antecedents, wryly rejoined, “We Dutch know better.”¹ Indeed, although in the popular imagination Calvinism and the Netherlands are virtually synonymous, the actual history of this relationship is, of course, far more complicated. In the Netherlandish context John Calvin, or rather the religious movement his ideas helped to inspire, had to compete with a wide variety of other equally zealous and committed groups intent on religious reform. Although Calvinism would “win” the Reformation in the Netherlands by becoming the only publicly sanctioned religion of the independent Dutch state, it would also have to coexist with a wide variety of religious movements and sects throughout its history. The Dutch Republic was not Calvinist, but Calvinist and pluralist.